Aycliffe Artist John Palliser is painting a picture in secret ready for unveiling at a charity event celebrating Armed Forces Day in Sunderland. It will then be exhibited in Bede’s World before starting a four year UK tour to include several war museum galleries.
The extra large oil painting commemorates the 100th year since the start of World War 1. It respectfully portrays acts of extreme bravery, and the obscene consequences of the Great War.
Said John: “A generation of innocent young men, their heads full of honour, glory and England, went off to war to make the world safe for democracy.”
“They were slaughtered in often ill-conceived battles planned by incompetent and misguided generals. Those who survived were shocked, disillusioned and embittered by their war experiences, and saw their real enemies were not the Germans, but the old men at home who had lied to them.”
“They rejected the values of the society that sent them to war, and in doing so separated their own generation from the past and from their cultural inheritance. The painting had to be historically accurate, symbolic in its approach and most of all bringing justice to the millions of lost souls on all sides.”
A third of the large oil painting being completed by John Palliser
